• 3-minute read
• 30th May 2016

Student Living: 6 Simple Ways to Organise Household Chores

One of the best things about student life is sharing a house with friends. However, whether you remain friends may depend on your ability to navigate the pitfalls of cohabitation, especially dealing with household chores.

As such, you might want to try the following techniques for ensuring domestic harmony…

1. How Tidy is Tidy?

When it comes to household chores, we all have slightly different ideas of what constitutes ‘tidy’.

For example, while your housemate might be comfortable letting the dishes pile up in the sink for a week, watching mould grow in an old coffee cup might be enough to give you palpitations.

The key is, therefore, knowing how tidy you and your housemates each like your space to be and coming to some kind of compromise.

2. Clean Up After Yourself

You’ll probably need to do a big clean now and then, but you can save a lot of effort in the long term by simply tidying up after yourself as you go.

This means not leaving dirty plates lying around, tidying up after spills, and maybe scraping up whatever that weird mess was in the living room after the party last weekend.

3. Divide Responsibilities Fairly

You don’t have to make a chart meticulously documenting every single household chore and the person responsible (we do, but that’s just because we like charts).

But having a vague idea of who is responsible for what will prevent arguments in the future. Perhaps different people can take charge of keeping different parts of the house tidy, or perhaps you’ll prefer to each take on a different job.

4. Keep Track of Your Bills

We’re not sure whether money is truly the root of all evil, but it can cause arguments between even the best of friends. As such, you’ll want to make sure issues regarding bills and rent don’t cause tension in your shared house.

One way to do this is to use an app like Splitwise to keep track of bills and shared expenses, as then you’ll have something to check should a disagreement occur.

5. Hire a Cleaner

It might not be in the budget for most students, but if you and your friends each chip in a few dollars you could even hire a professional cleaner to help keep things tidy for you!

6. Communicate!

This is an obvious one (and applies to far more than just household chores), but the best way to make sure everyone in your home is happy is to communicate with one another.

If you feel like you’re doing more than your fair share, ask your friends (nicely) to do a little more. If the place is looking untidy, clear the air by discussing it with one another.

And if the only way you can communicate with your housemates is by leaving passive aggressive notes on the fridge, it might be time to start looking for new housemates.